What’s Behind This Change
In 2018, The State Board of Education and its statewide general education committee made the following decisions about oral communication courses at Idaho institutions.
- The state named oral communication as one of six statewide learning outcomes for transferable general education courses (GEM) courses.
- The Board asked institutions to facilitate greater transferability of course credits
- The State adopted a revised oral communication outcomes rubric, which added “key theories, perspectives, principles, and concepts in the Communication discipline” to the outcomes criteria
These policies and priorities made Boise State’s former Communication in the Discipline structure unsustainable, leading to the establishment of the Foundations of Oral Communication course category, which contains only two redesigned courses, launched in Fall 2019: COMM 101 and SOC 122.
- COMM 101 Fundamentals of Oral Communication (will serve most students)
- SOC 122 Sociological Communication (limited enrollment)
How This Change Affected Requirements
- Effective Fall 2019, COMM 101 meets the learning outcomes for the Foundation of Oral Communication (FC) requirement and will be transcripted as such for any student taking it thereafter.
- COMM 101 taken prior to Fall 2019 meets the learning outcomes for the Foundations of Social Sciences (FS) requirement and will be transcripted as such. To hold students harmless in this transition, consideration is given to requests from advisors for academic adjustments that allow COMM 101 taken prior to Fall 2019 to count as a CID/FC instead of a FS.
- COMM 101 cannot be used for both the FS and CID/FC requirement.
Specially Affected Programs
Several programs specifically required students to take COMM 101 to fulfill the Foundations of Social Sciences (FS) requirement prior to the 2019 redesign of Comm 101: Biology BS, Communication BA, Computer Science BS, Construction Management BS, and Social Work BA.
- Effective Fall 2019, COMM 101 was moved from the Foundations of Social Sciences (FS) to the Foundations of Oral Communication (FC) category in the degree boxes for these programs. A general FS course will be required in place of COMM 101 to fulfill the FS requirement.
- Students in these specially affected programs (Biology BS, Communication BA, Computer Science BS, Construction Management BS, and Social Work BA) who are on catalogs issued prior to 2019-20 may use COMM 101 to fulfill the Foundations of Social Sciences (FS) requirement, provided that they also complete the required Communication in the Discipline (CID) course specified in their catalog.